The present invention relates to a shelving arrangement. More specifically, the present invention relates to a merchandise display shelving arrangement with gravity feed shelves which are conveniently loaded from the rear ends of the shelves.
Conventional merchandise display shelving arrangements with shelves at several levels, like the "gondola" shelving commonly used in grocery stores, are relatively heavy and are designed to support relatively heavy merchandise loads. In a grocery store, gondola shelving units are conventionally placed back-to-back. Because of their weight, these shelving units are not readily movable and do not offer access to the displayed merchandise from the rear ends of the shelves.
Because some merchandise, packaged foods, for example, degrade over time, it is advantageous to position the fresher merchandise articles at the rear of the shelves. In this way, the older articles, at the front of the shelves, are more likely to sell first, and an accumulation of out-of-date merchandise is less likely to occur.
Stocking conventional grocery shelving so that the fresher merchandise articles are at the rear of the shelves is troublesome when the shelves are not accessible from the rear. Frequently, articles at the front of the shelves must be moved aside, or removed from the shelves, in order to allow placement of the fresher articles at the rear. If the rear of the shelving were accessible, adding fresh merchandise at the rear ends of the shelves would be considerably more convenient and efficient.
In some stores, such as the "warehouse type" retail stores, the merchandise shelving employs shelves which are inclined downwardly from rear to front so that the weight of the displayed articles causes them to move toward the front ends of the shelves. Typically, the gravity-feed shelving units are located against walls at the periphery of the store. The shelves are stocked from a room or an aisle behind the walls.
In central regions of stores, access to the rear of stationary shelving units is not easily provided. Consequently, the favorable attributes of gravity-feed shelving, or other shelving which is loaded from the rear, are not realized in these regions of a store which are away from the store periphery.
In view of the shortcomings of known merchandise display shelving arrangements, a shelving arrangement which allows easy access to the rear of the shelves, and which could be placed in a central region of a store, would be most welcome.